Knowledges. Translating from Greek into Arabic between the Eighth and Tenth Centuries

In medieval Islam between the 8th and 10th centuries an unprecedented movement took place in the history of human civilization: the translation into Arabic from Greek, Syriac, Mid-Persian, and Sanskrit texts of ancient secular knowledge. Works of astrology, astronomy, alchemy, mathematics, geometry, medicine, pharmacology and philosophy were translated, all the texts that could be found from one end of the ʿabbāsid dār al-islām to the other, from the territories of the Byzantine Empire to the shores of the Indus through the territories of Syria, Iraq, with Baghdad as its epicenter, and throughout the Near and Middle East. This translation phenomenon was generated in a scenario in which the Islamic religion had unified different populations, formerly Hellenized, but bearers of their own culture. The Arabic of the Koran had become the linguistic koiné and, in addition to the capital of Baghdad, the great and lively urban centers such as Alexandra of Egypt, Cairo, Damascus and Buḫāra hosted an intense cultural life, dominated by the demands of Islamic monotheism in the double Sunni and Shiite version, but open to the scientific contributions of other religious communities present - Melkite Christians, West Syrian and Eastern Syrian, Jewish and Zoroastrian, to name but a few.